How much does an
AI consultant actually cost?

There is no single number, and the reason is specific: cost scales close to linearly with how many separate systems the work has to read from or write to. Two proposals for the same outcome can differ five times over because one vendor has connected that exact stack before and the other is meeting it for the first time. Ask for pricing per connected system, not one flat figure.

The reasoning and the interface are largely reusable between builds. Connecting each system is original work: authentication, permission scopes, and the specific shape of that company's data all have to be handled separately. A vendor who has already wired HubSpot to Google Workspace to Slack is selling configuration. A vendor meeting those three for the first time is selling integration. Both numbers can be honest and they are not comparable.

Four questions. How many systems does this touch, and what is the price per system. Which of those have you connected before, and can you show me. What happens when one of them changes a field name or retires an API version. And what do I own at the end: the logic, the connections, and the credentials.

What a month without the system costs. A rough figure is fine, an order of magnitude is fine, two hours a week times a loaded hourly rate is fine. If no number exists, the project has no cost of delay attached and it will lose to every urgent thing until it is quietly dropped.

Every engagement starts with the Diagnostic: two weeks, a fixed fee agreed up front, ending in a written scope and a fixed price for the build itself. Nothing is quoted before the systems have been counted, which is the whole point of the two weeks.